He is the foremost of every class, down to the smallest sound of speech.

Krishna continues naming the supreme instances within ordinary categories, and his first example is the smallest unit of speech: among the letters (akshara), he is the vowel 'a' (akara). The commentators ground this almost unanimously in a Vedic text, 'the letter A is indeed all speech' (akaro vai sarva vak), and explain why 'a' deserves this pride of place. It is the first sound in the alphabet, the very source from which all other speech-sounds arise, and it is the latent ground inside every consonant, since no consonant can even be pronounced without the vowel 'a' sounding within it. So 'a' is not just one letter among many; it is the hidden foundation that makes all spoken language possible, and that is why Krishna claims it as his glory.

Among the kinds of grammatical compounds (samasa, words joined together), he is the dvandva, the copulative or 'pairing' compound, as in 'Rama-Krishna' where two names are simply joined as equals. The commentators give a precise reason for choosing this one compound over the others. In a dvandva both members keep their full, primary meaning and stand on equal footing, whereas in the other compound-types one member is subordinate to another: in the avyayibhava the first member dominates, in the tatpurusha the latter member dominates, and in the bahuvrihi the meaning points outside to a third thing. Because the dvandva alone preserves the equal prominence of both its members, it is reckoned the most excellent compound, and so Krishna identifies himself with it.

Krishna then says he is imperishable Time (akshaya kala). The commentators are careful to mark this off from an earlier verse where Krishna also named himself as time. There the time meant was the time that gets used up and counts down, the kind that measures a lifespan in years and centuries and is exhausted when that span runs out. Here, by contrast, the time named is the unending, never-spent time that flows on like a continuous current, or, on a deeper reading, the supreme Lord himself who stands as 'the time even of time,' beyond and above all measured time. Several commentators offer both senses: the imperishable moment-by-moment flow, and the Lord as the very principle of time who is never touched by time's passing.

Finally Krishna calls himself the dispenser (dhata) who faces in every direction (vishvato-mukha). The commentators read 'dhata' as the ordainer or apportioner who hands out to the whole world the fruits of action (karma-phala), and 'facing every way' as his being turned toward all beings at once, so that he alone allots every result of every deed and leaves no creature unattended. Because the Lord is all-pervading and present everywhere, he can be the one impartial dispenser of consequences across the entire creation.